September marks the 175th anniversary of Scientific American, one of the magazines from a memorable era in journalism that included Life as well as Time – periodicals longer than 20 pages. In honor of SA's anniversary, the editors devoted an article to the words used in articles since the founding of the magazine back in 1845.

There are some striking differences between how Europeans and Americans are navigating the pandemic. The latter have a lot to learn from the former.

As I watch the current debacle of our children preparing to return to school, I more and more feel it is time to take a moment to talk about the errors we have made. My original thoughts turned to responsibility and accountability, words that have occupied my professional life as a surgeon, words molding my thinking just as they molded my character.

For every additional microgram per liter of lithium in the water supply, the suicide rate dropped by 0.27 per 100,000 people per year.

If you're someone who believes that the Food and Drug Administration is purely guided by science and that politics has never influenced its decisions, we likely live on different planets. As for some background, here's some recommended reading to go with our overall perspective on this issue.

Another clinical trial of remdesivir – this time with hospitalized patients having moderate COVID-19 – yielded disappointing and strange results. The first randomized trial showed a modest benefit in patients with severe COVID, so theoretically the drug should have worked better in patients who weren't as sick. But, it didn't.

There are any number of papers supporting the idea that higher levels of air pollution are inversely correlated with poorer health outcomes. These studies all suffer from the fellow travelers of air pollution, traffic density, poverty, and lesser education which confound a clear linkage between air pollution and health. A new study offers a possibility.

The most recent workshop of the Beyond Science and Decisions series was conducted at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) in Cincinnati, Ohio, in February of this year.

Obesity remains a significant health problem, especially when it increases one's susceptibility to COVID-19. While better eating habits and exercise have long been the mainstays of weight reduction, in the last 10-to-15 years surgical rearrangements of the gastrointestinal tract have come to the fore. Not only do they reduce weight, but they've improved hypertension and diabetes mellitus. A new study compares surgical and medical management for diabetes.

If artificial intelligence can replace some highly specialized medical doctors, is any job safe? It appears the biomedical profession is ripe for an overhaul.